People have always been fascinated with the heavens. They have been cited for the origins of the universe and life. Stars and constellations are the basis of fables, myths, and stories in almost every culture on the earth. The stars are used as indicators of peoples' future by some. Sailors and other travelers rely on certain stars and constellations as indicators of position and direction. Further, there is an enormous amount of professional and hobbyist interest in the stars.
Both professionals and hobbyists use celestial object identifying devices to locate a star, constellation, planet, comet, asteroid, artificial satellite, deep sky object or other heavenly objects, which shall be referred to collectively as celestial objects. Some existing celestial object identifying devices function by using a combination of mechanical electrical or pre-tabulated charts or tables.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,863,365 to Moliard discloses a method which uses a flat spinning disc that contains a pictorial representation of a celestial hemisphere containing constellations and stars. The user must rotate the disc to the current time and date, and then orient himself or herself with the proper compass direction. Identification of a celestial object is attempted by the user comparing the sky with the celestial hemisphere pictorial representation. This method proves rather difficult to locate a celestial object, in that the sky and the pictorial representation of the celestial hemisphere are two different scales. Additionally, the disc contains a flattened perspective of the celestial hemisphere making it difficult to judge at what angle of declination one would locate the desired celestial object. Further, the sky contains many more celestial objects than the pictorial representation can possibly contain, making it difficult to determine which pattern of stars on the pictorial representation corresponds to a particular region of the sky.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,704,653 to Lee discloses a pictorial representation of the celestial hemisphere in which is incorporated an electronic compass. The electronic compass identifies which region of the sky the operator of the Lee device is facing. The compass assists in pointing to the approximate azimuth of the celestial object. However, the task of determining the proper declination, and performing a mental translation from a set of maps, to the particular region of the sky one is observing, is still handled unaided by the operator. This leaves most of the work in locating a celestial object to the operator.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,938,697 to Mayer contains a somewhat clumsy and complicated mechanical method of directly observing a region of the sky without a map. It requires a good deal of understanding of the devices workings to obtain any success. In addition, it can only locate a star-group or constellation.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,970,793 to Atamian contains a method for location of stars and constellations, yet it requires manual alignment of a sphere oriented with the sky to work properly. It also has the same scale difference problem mentioned above in regard to U.S. Pat. No. 3,863,365 and leaves much ambiguity in observing heavenly bodies.
Thus, there is a need for a more user-friendly device to locate celestial objects.